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Monday, 10 June 2013

Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59

Author Iain
Banks has died aged 59, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his
family has said.

Banks, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, revealed in
April he had gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live for more than a year.

He was best known for his novels The Wasp Factory,
The Crow Road and Complicity.

In a statement, his publisher said he was "an
irreplaceable part of the literary world".

A message posted on Banksophilia,
a website set up to provide fans with updates on the author, quoted his wife
Adele saying: "Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death was
calm and without pain."

Publisher Little, Brown Book Group said the author
was "one of the country's best-loved novelists" for both his
mainstream and science fiction books.

"Iain Banks' ability to combine the most fertile
of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him
unique," it said.

After announcing his illness in April, Banks asked
his publishers to bring forward the release date of his latest novel, The
Quarry, so he could see it on the shelves.

On Sunday, it was revealed the book - to be released
on 20 June - would detail the physical and emotional strain of cancer.

It describes the final weeks of the life of a man in
his 40s who has terminal cancer.

"I had no inkling. So it wasn't as though this
is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to
go," he said.

"And then 10,000 words from the end, as it
turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer."

'Craft
and skill'

Little, Brown said the author was presented with
finished copies of his last novel three weeks ago.

Banks' first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published
in 1984 and was ranked as one of the best 100 books of the 20th Century in a 1997
poll conducted by book chain Waterstones and Channel 4.

In 2008 he was named one of the 50 greatest British
writers since 1945 in a list compiled by The Times.

The writer also penned sci-fi titles under the name
Iain M Banks. His most recent book, The Hydrogen Sonata, was released last
year.

Fellow Scottish
author Ken MacLeod paid tribute to Banks, saying he had "left a large gap
in the Scottish literary scene as well as the wider speaking English
world".

"He
brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life and he
explored them both without flinching," he said.

"He
brought the same degree of craft and skill and commitment to his science
fiction as he did to his mainstream fiction and he never drew any distinction
in terms of his pride in what he was doing."

Another
contemporary, Iain Rankin, told the BBC that Banks was "fascinating,
curious and full of life".

"He didn't
take things too seriously, and in a way I'm happy that he refused to take death
too seriously - he could still joke about it," he said. "I think we
all thought he would have a bit longer than he got.

"What made
him a great writer was that he was childlike; he had a curiosity about the
world. He was restless, he wanted to transmit that in his work, and he treated
the cancer with a certain amount of levity, the same that made him a great
writer.

"You never knew what you were going to get,
every book was different."

Other authors to pay tribute included Irvine Welsh,
who tweeted:
"RIP Iain Banks. One of the finest writers and greatest imaginations
ever."